“Our World is Burning” brings together the work of 33 international artists at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, presenting a political and critical view of contemporary art seen from the Gulf, where the exhibition’s collaborating institution Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art is located. “Our World is Burning” is curated by the Doha-based museum’s Director Abdellah Karroum, who provides the exhibition’s Gulf-centric vantage point radiating out to various regions of the world to consider times of global crises and the artistic response to them.
Critical situations have been at the order of the day in the Gulf region’s 21st century, with wars and diplomatic tensions determining its history. As the title suggests, the exhibition references a variety of “burning” issues, from human disasters generated by the successive conflicts in the Gulf region, to the ecological catastrophes embodied by the destructive forest fires from Amazonia and Siberia to California. It is even more relevant now to look into art that explores such issues at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic, a worldwide calamity, has struck and has divided and united the world population at the same time.
As the curator explains, the exhibition “Our World Is Burning” has been conceived so as to offer a reflection about the state of the world. Karroum writes in his curatorial essay:
Its construction in three interwoven themes responds to the need for an awareness of the urgent questions which can be seen in a series of crises in existence. The first of these crises is ecological. The second is social and political. The third is ethical and human: which is approached in the works not only through a critique of hegemonic narratives, but also of the fake news that imperils the credibility of the media.
The title “Our World Is Burning” thus “evokes the flames that are surrounding us on all sides”, writes Karroum. This image, he continues, expresses the feelings of many, especially those who live in armed conflict zones, countries devasted by civil wars or who are directly affected by natural catastrophes. Shirin Neshat’s photographic series Our House Is on Fire, for instance, portrays the tragic repercussions of conflictual situations seen in the eyes of Egyptian citizens.
Fire, though, as catastrophic and destructive as it can be, does not reference only danger, but also hope, says Karroum, as a symbol for example of the democratic élan experienced by the Gulf region during the Arab Springs. Thus, in this global context of political debate and environmental fragility, the exhibition attempts to sketch a map, even though sensitive and fragmentary, of the societal transformations in the Middle East and beyond.
Karroum writes in his curatorial essay about the need, now more than ever, of a cohesive, global response to crises that interest the entire world and humanity at large, rather than just the single countries’ economic and politcal interests:
The actual interdependency of life on earth is forcing us to rethink our lifestyles, our relationships with the living world, with other animal or vegetal species, the economy and the management of natural resources, as well as the protection of for- ests and oceans. This implies a need for states to consider the planet in its entirety, over and above the territories they manage socially and politically.
The curator points out the works of Yto Barrada, John Akomfrah, Monira Al Qadiri and Otobong Nkanga as ones that open up debate, “transforming the museum into a meeting place which incites both artists and visitors to the exhibition to work on their awareness of the state of the world”.
Monira Al Qadiri‘s OR-BIT 1, for instance, is a levitating iridescent model of an oil drill, quietly rotating in space as if it wanted to drill through the sky above. The work resembles an architectural model akin to the Tower of Babel, hypnotic and alluring in its manufacture. At the same time, its exterior beauty belies a darker nature, as it embodies the infinite human desire to strive upwards while accumulating more wealth and power. Al Qadiri thus suggests that the riches generated by oil exploration have fuelled – and continue to do so – the “toxic aspirations” of man to hover above others, in a seemingly unending spiralling motion. Her work not only highlights the political and econimic impact of oil exploitation, but also its ecological one.
In a world driven by man’s greed and the relentless exploitation of nature, with the consequential destruction of the world environment, Alive, with Cerussite and Peppered Moth (2017) by Raqs Media Collective explores the possibility of extension and infinite transformation. The work features digital images of insects projected onto mineral and vegetable elements. These insects mutate in order to adapt to changes in their natural environments. This capacity for adaptation allows beings to continue to seek out a certain form of balance, despite the threats that human colonies occupying vast territories bring to bear on the environment and the planet Earth.
Mounira Al Solh’s ongoing project examines yet another capacity for adaptation to changing environments. The artist engages with the social impacts of conflict and migration, exploring both a collective reality and personal memory. I strongly believe in our right to be frivolous is a collection of handwritten notes and handdrawn portraits on yellow legal-pad and other A4 papers. The artist began the series of “time documents”, as she calls them, in 2012, shortly after Syrian people, who were forced to leave their country due to the war, started going to Lebanon, among other places.
At the time, many Lebanese reacted in racist ways to their arrival, and Al Solh decided to create a work about them, to welcome them and celebrate their courage, and the hope they embodied. She then started inviting some of them over to her studio in Beirut to have tea or drinks and chat, and let them share their stories. She drew her portraits and took notes, often in the dialect or slang they used to speak in. Al Solh’s mother is Syrian, and she spent a lot of time in Syria during the time of the Lebanese revolution, thus experiencing something akin to what these people were now going through. The artist also found a deeper connection to them because of her origins, and the fact that, once they moved from Lebanon to other destinations, they would become citizens of the world, like herself. They all have overcome difficulties, destruction, trauma and have reconstructed their lives, elsewhere, with a renewed hope for the future.
However, their situation poses us in front of a much larger ethical dilemma, experienced by an even greater number of people around the world, as Danh Võ highlights in his work We the People. The artist points to the way the world is fragmented into small parts, each with its own ideas of what is right and wrong, often many of which clash with what is widely viewed as just. Võ expresses the difficulty in giving an overall meaning to an idea of freedom, by presenting a reproduction of the copper shell of the Statue of Liberty, left in pieces and scattered across the world.
French art historian Fabien Danesi, co-organiser of the exhibition, writes in his essay about the importance of shifting perspectives to consider the state of the world today, and enact necessary changes. He sustains that “In this period of troubles which we are going through, deserting the present would mean giving up on the future, so it is essential to change the paradigm of our society.” In his curatorial essay, Karroum concludes on a hopeful note for the future:
The dream for a better life, the idea of creating a di erent world and projects to or- ganise a fair society have preoccupied artists throughout history. They have cast into their artworks this dimension of responsibility, in an often poetic and sometimes political way. Encountering a work can alter our perceptions of the world and modify our relationship with it, while inviting us to take action, with an active participation in community life. In this collectiveness, the point is to connect ecological, political and ethical spaces. The questions raised by these works, as well as the positions adopted by the artists, allied with other groups of professionals and lovers of life, might trigger responses to the crises that threaten humanity as it drifts towards the unknown, like a boat crossing the high seas. Future.
C. A. Xuân Mai Ardia
Listen to R22 is Burning, an experimental radio platform developed by Syma Tariq and Francesca Savoldi in collaboration with R22 Sound Station and Palais de Tokyo. R22 is Burning also features (contentious) responses to the Palais de Tokyo 2020 exhibition, “Our World is Burning”.
“Our World is Burning” is on view from 21 February to 1 September 2020 at Palais de Tokyo, Paris.